If you look up my job description, it says I’m an ESL teacher for a large urban district with a high percentage of multilingual learners. But I don’t really like the title “ESL teacher,” because it gives the impression that I am teaching English as a second language. It’s true, I do teach in English, but it’s very rarely the second language of my students. It could be the third, fourth, or even fifth language they’re adding to their communication belt! I prefer “English Language Specialist” or “English Language Development Teacher” but those don’t roll off the tongue quite as well as “English as a Second Language Teacher”… right?!… 

So if you see me referring to myself and my colleagues by so many different names and acronyms (ESL/ESOL/ELD/ENL) that you can’t keep up, just know that we’re all having a bit of a crisis over how to identify ourselves, and that problem probably won’t be going away anytime soon.

This year, I’m working hard to consistently ditch the term “ESL” for more asset-based and accurate terms. Though my job is centered around teaching the English language, my students’ identities are not centered around learning English. Let’s celebrate all the linguistic skills our students bring to the table!

Here are the two important shifts I’m making:

1. From ESL (English as a Second Language) to ELD (English Language Development)

The term “ESL” assumes that English is our students’ second language, but in many cases it is their third/fourth/etc. language! Moving to ELD acknowledges that our students are learning English but does not assume anything about their linguistic identity.

2. From EL (English Learner) to ML (Multilingual Learner)

This shift hasn’t been too difficult at all for me and my school to make! When we use the term EL to describe our students, we are describing them based upon a deficit– that they are still learning English. Moving to the use of ML to describe our students is an asset-based approach that describes all of the linguistic skills our students already possess.

Let’s try these new (but not really new) acronyms in a sentence:
“I am an English language specialist, teaching ELD to MLs at my school.”

I’ll be honest— ditching ESL completely is going to be difficult because it’s so heavily ingrained in district language, state/federal funding, certification names, internet resources. Sometimes I feel like I’m speaking a whole other language when I’m using all of the acronyms that could be used to describe my job. But the consistent act of normalizing these terms and putting away the old ones… that’s the first step. Will you join me?